Fall fun

October is flying by and we have been busy. We wrapped up our study on spiders and scarecrows. Lots of great learning going on here. I just love October!

We made a picture graph- Are you afraid of spiders? Then they analyzed the data on their own recording sheet.

 We learned how to make a graph with this anchor chart. Anchor chart inspired by Kim Adsit.

We labeled the parts of a spider. The kids drew their own spider in their science journal and practiced labeling the parts. Chart inspiration by Cara Carroll.

 Somewhere in October we learned about Christopher Columbus.

 We read The Little Scarecrow Boy and followed up with this craft by Julie Lee. They had to decide what kind of face they wanted their little scarecrow boy to have.

We read The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything. We retold and acted out the story using these fun story props. Then we learned all about onomatopoeia.

 We've also been having some spooky fun. We read this emergent reader. I passed out witch fingers for the kids to tract print. We used the reading strategy fly eye to help us decode tricky words. You can find this book and the student version in my new spooky spooky unit.

 I put these and the play-doh mats in my morning tubs. I found all the erasers and bags at Target. My kids love it. All of these activities are found here.

 

 Be sure to check out these units on TPT.

scarecrow directed drawing

I received many emails asking how I did this directed drawing activity with my class. So this year when I did it with my kiddos I snapped some pictures. Here are the steps. Fold your paper into thirds.

hat and brim

 face, eyes, and stitching

 nose and mouth

 shirt and overall straps

 overall bottoms, buttons, and pockets

 outline in black crayon and color

 The finished product!

Have your kids brainstorm what they would like to have scared away (bad dreams, snakes, nightmares, roaches, homework, monsters). Then have them complete the writing prompt, I scare away . . .

Here are some more activites we did to go along with this book

 

 

The little old lady who was not afraid of anything

The beginning of November was spent using the book, The little old lady who was not afraid of anything. It was a great transition from Halloween to scarecrows. Here are some of the activities we did as an extension.

We learned that farmers use scarecrows to scare away crows. Then we finished the sentence prompt," I scare away . . ." For the art part we did a directed drawing activity. I love how they turned out.

These two say, "I scare away scorpions."

"I scare away roaches."

When we did a scarecrow circle map one of my little sweeties told me scarecrows scare away roaches. Um, not exactly.

The book is perfect for learning onomatopoeia. Here is the anchor chart we made.

We sang this song. The kids still break out in song whenever they hear an onomatopoeia word in a book we are reading. 

You can download it below.

We sequenced the book and retold the story using the picture clues drawn by classmates.

We measured the scarecrow and each other with pumpkins and completed the recording sheet.

We also labeled the scarecrow.

 

Veteran's Day, Fall, and scarecrows

I can't believe we made it to this point of the year. Thanksgiving is just around the corner! Do you get a full week off or do you have to go Monday and Tuesday like me?
We made a soldier bubble map. My class had to tell me the correct linking word to use. Then I taught them self-correcting strategies by asking, "Does it makes sense?" and "Does it sound right?" when they told me the wrong linking word.

My little solider was inspired by the one Cara Carroll from The First Grade Parade made last year.

We read these two books to build new knowledge about soldiers.

We used our soldier web to write sentences. Using the web they had to tell me what to write then I asked a child to read the sentence. They practiced reaidng with their finger by using the dot marker (love this strategy Fran from Kindergarten Crayons uses). Then another child read the sentence with a pointer.

We made these adorable soldiers from Deanna Jump's Veteran's Day unit. I am dying over how cute these are. We made these last year too.

We read American Soldier from Deanna's unit for shared reading then glued it in our poetry journals. We used the book to learn about sneaky slient e. That sneaky slient e he changes everything- he makes the vowel say its name.

Last week we read a lot of my Fall books. Then we brainstormed words for Fall. Then we did interactive writing to fill up my turkey.

Then we made sentences using our Fall words (another great idea Fran from Kindergarten Crayons posted about). Then we practiced reading with our fingers. Checking to make sure there were enough words, did it match, and did you have any words left over.

Cut a sentence activity using the sentence pattern from above. Each child had to dictate a sentence to me while I typed it. Then I gave them a baggie with the words cut apart. They had to glue the sentence in order left to right, top to bottom, and illustrate it.

Finally finished these scarecrows. A lot of work, but oh they turned out looking so adorable. We also labeleld our scarecrows. You can find the patterns for these in Deanna Jump's scarecrow unit.